"Daenerys," Jon said as he closed the door that led from their bedchamber to the much larger suite of rooms beyond.
He didn't get further than her name before she interrupted him. "We rule together," she reminded him. "That was part of our arrangement. Together! When our Hand … our Hand … suggests that we murder a young girl, our relative, even if it's rather distant, you need to be agreeing with me, not shaming me in front of our small council."
Jon stared at her in bewilderment. "Tyrion suggested no such thing, and even if he had, that's no cause to threaten to execute him … it was a meeting!"
"I know what it's like to be far from your true home, to fear assassins lurking behind every corner, to be afraid of the shadows," she hissed. "I will not be another Robert Baratheon … how could you side against me?"
Jon sat down on the bed and looked at her. "First, Tyrion didn't suggest we kill the Blackfyre girl, he was running down a list of options." Jon bowed his head and ran his hands through his hair. "Second, I would also like to point out that the very first option he mentioned was, and I quote, 'to simply leave her alone.'"
Daenerys's retort was immediate, "Well, then he was too glib about the whole thing. When you include 'kill her' on your list of possibilities, it means you might want to do it!"
"You have a point there," Jon admitted as he raised his head. "But it's Tyrion! He's always like that, and you still can't just tell him you're going to lop his head off."
Daenerys's eyes sparkled with anger. "Robert Baratheon sent assassins after me and Jorah Mormont to spy on me, Tyrion knows this. My Hand should have known better than to even voice it as an option."
Jon rubbed his forehead. "Daenerys, if you threaten to kill advisors who say things you don't like, you'll very quickly find that nobody says anything except what they're sure you want to hear."
She turned away and folded her arms in anger. "Why do you keep coming back to my threatening to kill him? You and Tyrion and the small council knows I didn't mean it."
Jon looked away but did not reply. She waited for him to agree with her, and when it didn't come, Daenerys shivered for a moment. The room suddenly felt very cold and still.
"You need to apologize to Tyrion," he finally said.
Her eyes widened in anger. "I will do no such thing."
"You will," he informed her, "and …
"You will NOT order me!"
"It's not an order, it's pointing out what's right," Jon said as he stood from the bed and pointed at her. "King or queen, lowborn or highborn, right is right, and wrong is wrong. You lost your temper, but now I understand that it was a sensitive subject for you … I'd have understood it during the meeting, too, if you'd bother to explain it. That being said," he pointed at her, "bloody hell Daenerys, I thought you had finally gotten it through your head that when you threaten to kill someone, people take it very seriously."
It always lingered over everything she did. She could never be free of it, never make it better. She could sit on the throne every day and defy her own instincts and let selfish, awful people get better than they deserve, and she could let Jon take back her kingdom, piece by piece, and lose good men in the process, instead of simply unleashing Drogon, and she could try to find some salve for her conscience in submitting to his advice, and in other ways, but it would never be enough. The burnt corpses would not spring back to life and the whispers of the mad queen's rampage would never go away.
I've had enough.
"Jon, you push me too far," she said quietly.
He breathed deeply, ran his hand through his hair again, and sat in the large, oversized chair she didn't particularly care for, that he always kept near the fireplace. "I push you too far? Tyrion asked for my word that he'd survive until the morning, and when I gave it, I don't know if he believed me."
"It is my small council, he is my Hand, and it is my kingdom!" she screamed.
He looked at her. "What, do you think I want any of this?" he gestured towards the open window of their balcony towards King's Landing. "All I wanted is you."
"Of course," she snapped, "so long as I would do your bidding."
"What is happening?" he asked in befuddlement. "We're past this. The realm is beginning to work again, you're doing …"
"Do not say that I am doing 'better,'" she interrupted.
"What do you want me to say then? What is really bothering you?"
A mass of anger seemed to be lodged in her chest, and she was struggling to choke it free and calm down. "We rule together," she said. "What happens in our bedroom does not mean you can shame me in front of my small council."
Jon opened his eyes wide in shock. "My intervening between you and Tyrion has nothing to do with that."
I've left this too long unsaid, and it's been eating away at me.
"Everything between us is always about that. Noblewomen whisper giggling stories of silk scarves binding their hands to headboards, and I must bite my tongue or else admit that my husband bends and binds and beats me for his own amusement as though I was a mummer's puppet."
"Is that how you see me, and yourself?" Jon stood up at that and walked over to her. He rested a hand on her shoulder. "Daenerys Stormborn, if I found you with shorn hair, covered in mud, plowing a field of pig shit wearing nothing except a sackcloth bag, I would still want with every part of my soul to take you right then and there in that field."
"You gave me no choice," she accused him.
He blinked in confusion. "A choice about what?"
As she pulled the splinter free from her soul, the clotted anger threaded into her words. "I was hated here, and you were loved, and I loved you. If I said no to anything you wanted … anything … what then for me? I wait for someone to sink a knife into my heart? Even now, you give me no choice."
"I've never …"
"Forced me?" she interrupted again. "I either let you do what you want, or you stalk off to commiserate with your wolf. You vanish into the night, and I sit here in our bedchamber cold and alone."
Jon's eyes seemed hollow and gaunt as he looked at her. "You've told me many times you …"
"Enjoy it?" she said. "I might, but that doesn't mean you can order me to apologize to Tyrion or anyone else. I am Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and I am tired of constantly worrying about your approval, or whether I am hurting anyone's feelings, or whether a criminal has lost too many fingers."
Jon turned away from her and faced the hearth. The fire still burned, but lower than it had a few minutes ago. Daenerys found herself irritated at the servants for not ensuring that it had been properly stoked.
Jon didn't turn when he spoke to her. "I love you Daenerys," he intoned softly. "But … so many bad things have happened to you."
"And?"
He hung his head. "I want nothing more than to help you be whole, and happy, and with whatever haunting you gone from your mind, and I want to be with you … but maybe it's not enough." The flames in the fireplace flickered for a second, and a chill seemed to creep over the room.
She waited to see if he would continue, and he did, but it was a long time coming.
"Do as you will," he said softly.
The flames of the hearth had guttered to a feeble flicker at that point, and she had to rub her arms against the growing cold.
Daenerys left Jon to his moping and stalked through the door and into the far more extravagantly decorated main rooms of the royal quarters. The balcony was uncurtained, letting in a sizable draft, but she felt confined, trapped, and had to find space.
She trod across the stone of the floor until she reached the balcony's border, then she stepped outside. Somewhere in the night sky, she knew, Drogon hunted, and below her, the lights of King's Landing spread in all directions as the dark sea lapped at the piers.
Knives had followed her everywhere she went, and her entire life she had always known fear. Viserys hadn't cared, but Viserys had been a fool. Drogo hadn't cared, but Drogo was large, and she was small, and besides, her Khal was long dead.
Did I really threaten to execute Tyrion?
She had threatened to kill Tyrion, and suddenly, the moment came back to her, the small council looking at her with a mixture of terror and concern, and then her rage growing when she realized that they were turning to Jon in the hopes that he might say or do something to control the mad queen … she knew that's what they called her behind her back … right now, they were all probably plotting to …
Daenerys gasped and blinked a few times.
What am I thinking? What am I doing?
It shocked her how quickly her rage turned to regret. She had pulled the splinter of her bitterness free only to give voice to the infection. She walked back inside, through the still-open door into her and Jon's bedchamber. The cold had grown deep and still, shadows clung oddly to the walls, and the fire had dwindled to embers. For a moment, she thought her breath misted in the air.
Jon didn't respond when she entered.
She walked in front of his chair to find her husband slumped back, still staring at the fire.
The next words did not come easy to her, but she took a deep breath and said them anyway, "I am sorry about some of the things I have said tonight," she informed him. "They were unfair, and they were untrue."
Jon did not reply.
A small flare of irritation curdled inside her. "I know you're angry, but you can at least talk to me."
"I'm not angry at you, Daenerys," he finally said. "I love you."
She waited for him to continue, but he did not. The shadows of the room pressed closer.
"What is happening here," she asked with growing concern as she looked about the room. The embers had dimmed so low that Jon was barely illuminated, at all.
This is magic.
Jon had magic in his blood, she knew that, but snuffing out candles or making a shadow twitch had always seemed to be the extent of the abilities he'd been granted after returning to life. This … this was different. The darkness was creeping towards Jon, and it seemed to her like it intended to strangle him. She crouched next to the chair and shook his shoulder. "Jon!" He rotated his head to look at her. "Jon, what's happening?"
He smiled at her and raised a hand to stroke her cheek, but almost as if the weight of it was too heavy, he dropped his arm back to his side.
"Jon, please talk to me."
Jon simply sat there like a dead thing staring at a dying fire.
Her husband had told her once that fire and love bound him to this world, not life … not true life … and that he was, in fact, not alive. She had paid it little mind, he certainly looked alive enough to her, but now she was beginning to fear he had told her the truth.
"I'm sorry, truly," she said. "Please forgive me. You were right."
How do I help him?
On an impulse, she pressed her lips against his. They were cold, and when she held her hand against his chest, she felt no heartbeat.
"The collar," he whispered, his voice thin and wavering.
She didn't question his words, she simply rushed to the cabinet where she he kept it, began tossing items on the floor, tears forming in her eyes as she pawed through possessions trying to find it.
Where is it?
And then she saw it, gleaming behind a pair of gloves on the bottom shelf. She knelt down on all fours, retrieved the collar, and rushed towards Jon. Remembering his many warnings about not taking privacy for granted, she scrambled to the door and quickly barred it. Shadows seemed to lap at her feet as she stepped away from the heavy oak.
"Jon, I'm back," she said as she rushed over to his chair and knelt down in front of him. She pressed the collar against his hand. "I love you, please stay with me."
When he didn't move, she snapped the collar around her own neck.
He immediately sat upright in his chair and smiled at her. His sudden energy after appearing on the brink of death startled her sufficiently that she stood up and stepped away. She glanced around, and the shadows creeping along the walls and the edges of the furniture had vanished, while the fireplace seemed to be glowing hot again. She resisted the urge to hold out her hands, still cold from a few minutes ago, and warm them near the flames.
What is happening?
She slowly rotated to Jon and found him smiling broadly at her, an irritating look of satisfaction on his face. He stood, kicked away his boots, and proceeded to slowly remove his shirt.
A growing suspicion formed in Daenerys's mind.
"You didn't!" she yelled at him. "Was that a farce to torment me?"
He winked at her. "I wanted to see how much you cared."
You bastard!
As there was nothing on hand to throw at him, she stomped over and clouted him as hard as she could in the shoulder. "I thought you were dying!" She gestured around. "How long have you been able to do that?"
"Sam's been sending me instructions on how to practice," he said, sounding very proud of himself. "Makes for a good show."
He tossed his shirt aside, and she watched his muscles ripple golden in the light. She felt a flush of excitement, despite her anger. The fireplace gave the brown stubble on his jaw line a most appealing ruddy color. She forced herself to look away and cross her arms across her chest before she spoke again.
"Really, though. I hate magic … you know what it's taken from me … that was cruel."
His face grew more serious. "It was cruel to threaten to execute a man who's already dodged the headsman's axe on multiple occasions," he reminded her. "Seems to me like it's been a day for cruelty, and maybe you had it coming." He stood and stepped over to her. He reached out with one calloused hand, slipped his index finger under the collar, and pulled her closer to him. She felt something flutter deep inside and her feet shifted involuntarily as a warmth begin to grow in her core.
"I didn't even have to put it on you," he said, his voice halfway to a snarl.
She shifted uneasily. Jon suddenly seemed quite larger and stronger than her, and she had behaved very poorly that day.
We need to speak more about the wickedness of him playing me for the fool as to his life being in danger.
"Jon, I've lost so many people I've loved to terrible things, like magic," she explained, "promise me you won't ever do that again."
His answer was immediate. "I promise." He pulled her slightly closely with the collar, and now they were near enough that the front of her gown brushed against her shirt. "Really, I won't."
"Thank you."
He let go of the band around her neck and stepped back. He gestured towards the fireplace. "The light show, I hate doing that stuff, magic churns me up inside, but sometimes, Daenerys, you treat death as too casual a subject … you did deserve it. But that other stuff you said, about not having a choice, maybe you had a point." He scratched his chin. "I'll take the collar off, toss it away, or melt it down, whatever you want … I won't force you to do anything."
"But you'll leave me …" Daenerys whispered.
He shook his head. "How do I put this without hurting your feelings …"
My husband has such a way with words.
"I guess I'll be blunt," he decided, "I've let myself get too bloody much in love."
He should be a poet.
"Today was a bad day," he continued, "but you've well and truly captured my heart." She rolled her eyes as he dramatically clutched at his chest. "So, if you want done with being a 'mummer's puppet,' as you so cleverly put it, then fine." He sat down on the chair again. "I'm not going anywhere, either way, you're stuck with me." He pointed at her, "But, you're still going to apologize to Tyrion tomorrow."
She pursed her lips. "We'll see."
His eyes gleamed, and not in an altogether friendly fashion. "You're too bloody tough, wife."
Daenerys put her hands on her hips and tilted her head at him defiantly. "And?"
The gleam in Jon's eyes hardened further still into something more ferocious. "I think some simmering, to make you more tender, might be in order, but first you still need to make your choice. I will not have it linger between us that you feel forced into anything."
It hadn't taken her long to decide, nor much time after the choice was made for her to be kneeling with her hands behind her head, nude and dripping, on a soft, small circular rug in front of the fireplace. The fire's heat rippled across her body as she stared into its depths, and as curious as she was to see what Jon had yanked from his chest of torment, she kept her eyes staring straight ahead.
He walked in front of her and dangling from his hand was an extraordinarily long length of soft looking, thin, light brown rope, longer than she'd ever seen him use before. While his nearness was as exciting as ever, she did feel a slight of disappointment that he wasn't carrying something more … unexpected.
Jon dropped the rope on the ground, then pulled a nearby footstool closer. She could feel his eyes contemplating her as she knelt, knees spread wide, and trembling slightly in anticipation. "Open your mouth," he ordered.
She did so, but instead of the ball or the horrid wooden dowel, he surprised her by placing a small, wadded white cloth behind her teeth.
"Close," he said.
She closed her mouth, and although she was confused at first as to what he'd done, the coppery tang she tasted on her tongue and the soft texture of the material immediately gave away that Jon had retrieved the smallclothes she'd worn that day. Her saliva mixed with the cloth and the flavor of her own arousal soon became overpowering.
Her sex was sopping when Jon reached between her legs.
She couldn't tell if it was the stress of the day, or pent-up relief over Jon's jape at her expense, but she could barely keep from shuddering, moaning, or thrusting her hips towards his hand as he teased and caressed along her groove. She tightened the hands clasped behind her head so strongly that several of her knuckles popped.
"Hands down," he said encouragingly.
Thank you.
She lowered her hands and rested them on her knees, the extra support proving heavenly. She was almost embarrassed at how quickly her release was coming. She hunched forward, and ground her teeth against the fabric in her mouth, felt wracking shudders begin to coruscate throughout her groin, and then Jon teased at her bud, gently, ever so gently, and she knew that …
He pulled his hand away.
She inhaled sharply through her nose, moaned at the denial of what she was so close to achieving, and then Daenerys marveled that her husband knew her body so intimately that he could thwart her with such perfect timing. She looked up at him, black collar around her neck glinting red in the firelight, with needy, pleading eyes. She wondered if she could get her hands where they needed to be before he could stop her.
As if reading her thoughts, he said, "Hands on top of your head, and get your eyes back on that fire."
She obediently swiveled her gaze back into position and put her hands on top of her head.
He reached down and hooked his hands beneath her armpits.
"Stand."
She wondered why he was helping her, but when her legs wobbled as she rose to her feet, she realized that she had been close enough to the fire that Jon wanted to make sure she didn't topple forward. Her heart trembled at his thoughtfulness, then it resumed silently screaming at him to finish what he had started.
"Open," he said as he held out his hand.
She obediently spat out the cloth. The flavor of her own excitement still filled her mouth.
"Do you need to use the chamber pot," he asked.
The question surprised her, and not in a pleasant way.
Despite her husband's seemingly endless inventiveness, they had never experimented with pleasures along those lines. She couldn't help but look away from the fire and at him with trepidation, punishment be damned. "Jon …"
He caught her meaning immediately and gave her a firm, but not overly painful, smack on the rump. "Ugh, not for that, just, do you need to go?"
"No," she promptly informed him.
"Put your legs together and stand still."
Putting her legs together was not at all what she had in mind, but she did as he bid. Jon grabbed the enormous coil of rope, and shockingly, knelt down at her feet. When he had satisfied himself with something, he instructed her to rotate towards the mirror. She obliged, and then he began to work.
The first loops went around her ankles, multiple bands to spread the tension around, as he once described it to her, and then Jon cinched them tight … very tight … by winding a loop of rope around the center of the bindings to form the cinch. Daenerys had an expectation as to what would come next, but, instead, Jon surprised her by looping another band halfway between knee and ankle, and this one was then cinched quite tight as well. When the third band was placed only at her upper calves, she began to wonder what he was about, and it wasn't until he'd repeated the process enough times that the loops and hitches had reached her upper thighs that she realized what he was doing.
He's weaving a net.
It was certainly an interesting notion, and she had always admired watching him work in and around her body, intent, focused, and … masculine, but she couldn't help but wonder what the end purpose might be. With how closely he'd bound her legs together, there'd be little opportunity for pleasure for either of them.
However, she'd been surprised in such things before, so she resolved to wait and see.
The loops he placed around her waist mirrored the ones on her legs, but from there the process diverged. In some clever fashion he hitched the rope at the small of her back, then ran a double strand through her legs until the remainder of the long rope was in front of her. If not for his hand on her body, she would have fallen over as he rasped the braided cords through her crotch.
What is he doing?
She had already been sweating, but as he worked, she realized she would soon be drenched.
She watched in the mirror as Jon measured something off on the rope, then he proceeded to tie four or five overhand knots in the double strand of rope he'd passed through her legs. Satisfied with the result, he threaded the rope through the loop around her hips, near her belly button, and carefully, so as not to abrade or burn her skin, pulled the rope through.
Oh, no.
His intent became apparent when the rope pulled taut. The knots he'd made lined up perfectly with the groove of her sex, and although she was standing quite still, she could tell that every motion of her legs would provoke the damn things into rubbing along the center of slit, right on top of the already-sensitive bud Jon had antagonized and then abandoned earlier. Jon tied off the rope near her belly button, and Daenerys realized the knots were there to stay.
She bit her lip and watched, fascinated and horrified, as Jon deftly looped yet another hitch, then reversed course with the rope strands and threaded them back through her crotch and around again to her back. He positioned these reversed strands carefully and pulled them tight so that they settled into the outer edges of her sex.
In mute shock, she examined the sight of what her husband had done. The end result of his efforts was that a knotted rope pulled very tightly through the center of her slit rubbed continuously at her bud, while two other ropes pressed into the sides of her sex to pull it open. If she hadn't been shaved so closely, she might have had some protection, but the Volantene woman's visit had only been a few days ago … her cleft was as nude and vulnerable as a newborn's.
The ropes were already excruciatingly arousing …
Next, he pulled her hands behind her back. When they were settled near her waist, he proceeded to quickly wind the rope up her wrists, not stopping until he had covered five or six inches of wrist above her hands. She likened to the sensation to wearing vambraces made of cables. Jon cinched the binds around her wrists, tightening them off, then looped the rope through the one around her waist.
His purpose immediately became apparent. Not only were her wrists now utterly locked together … she'd have better luck picking up Drogon than getting her hands apart … but they were firmly welded to the small of her back and every attempt to move them would result in the ropes through her womanhood being jostled, disturbed, and tightened. She twisted her hands, and while her wrists stayed exactly where they had been placed, as she had feared, the knots slid against the center of sex. Sweat dripped from erect nipples, from her face, and something that wasn't sweat steadily dripped down her thighs.
Jon's progress went much more quickly now. More bands followed around her upper stomach, then slightly above that, then just below her breasts, then just above. All the while Jon's hand brushed against her skin, and the rope worked to frustrate her, and she wanted, no she needed him to kiss her so badly, and he wasn't even finished tying her and she felt like she was coming apart.
With every loop around her torso, he welded her arms against her body and then, after he'd finished tightening each cinch, he began to pull her elbows together. Once they were in the spot he wanted, he counter-cinched the ropes on her torso to ensure she would be unable to move or flex her elbows in either direction. The positioning was evidence of Jon's cunning knowledge of the limits of her endurance, as even though her elbows were helplessly linked together behind her back, they were far enough apart that he knew it wouldn't become painful over time.
She might not be able to move her arms, but at least they wouldn't hurt.
With her arms now essentially useless, Jon looped the rope casually under one of her shoulders, over her neck, and back down the other shoulder, all the while winding them in and out of the two rope strands above and below her breasts. When he was done, her chest was framed by tight bindings and rather pleasantly squeezed within a harness of rope. Jon tied the rope off at the base of her neck, and he looked quite well pleased with himself, if rather tired, when he stepped back to admire the sight.
Daenerys stared in shock at her image in the mirror. A neatly woven web of rope covered her from her neck all the way to her ankles. She dared not move, because she could not catch herself if she lost her balance, nor did she wish to move as every motion would disturb and oscillate the ropes wound through her crotch. In her opinion, her arms being pulled back while her breasts were uplifted and squeezed in their little harness created a rather impressive sight.
Jon, as if also enjoying the view of her chest thus presented, stood behind her and reached his hands around to caress her body. She moaned and leaned back against him.
"Jon …" she whispered.
"Struggle," he whispered back as he tweaked nipples rendered particularly sensitive by the squeezing pressure of the ropes.
Daenerys squirmed in her rope cocoon at his request even though she desperately did not want to struggle, because any movement, most particularly of her hands, sawed the rope through her sex and set off a torrent of sensations through her body. Struggling was pointless anyway. Her legs were stuck, her arms were more than stuck, and her womanhood was trapped within its cruel nest of ropes. She had never in her life felt so completely, totally, and utterly helpless.
Paradoxically, when Jon picked her up, she also wasn't sure if she'd ever in her life felt more safe.
He laid her on the bed, then proceeded to blow out all the candles in the room, leaving them lit only by the hearth and the light streaming in through the un-curtained balcony. She watched Jon with perplexed curiosity as he undressed down to his smallclothes and then yawned. If she was not mistaken, he very much appeared to be going to bed.
"What are you doing?" she finally dared to ask.
He reached down and she squeaked when he squeezed her nipple. "No talking," he grumbled. "I'm terrible at magic, and it took a lot out of me. I need my sleep."
I don't believe you.
Daenerys concluded that this was a test of her patience, so she waited silently to see what Jon might do next, but all he proceeded to do was to crawl into bed next to her. He bent over her and the eyes that had looked so dead earlier were tender as he gazed into hers, and then he kissed her long and deeply while he ran a hand lovingly on the collar around her neck. She returned the kiss and waited to see if his hand might sneak lower, but when the kiss was finished, she was left wanting.
He rolled her on her side away from him, which was not at all what she wanted, then he positioned himself next to her. Jon seemed to care not at all that she was coated with sweat as he pulled the blanket over them and draped his arm across her protectively. Daenerys found herself very much wondering if her husband had forgotten that his wife was very, very much still in need of the release he'd denied her earlier in the evening.
Is he teasing me?
While variety was to be expected, Daenerys's body had become rather attuned to the various methods her husband employed … but tonight was entirely different. Jon had seemed to loathe to cause her any pain, which she didn't mind, but he also didn't appear to be interested in seeing to any of her body's needs, which wasn't fine.
She was on the brink of inquiring as to his intentions, punishment be damned, when he spoke. "Daenerys, if your hands start to go numb, you wake me." He pulled her tightly against him, as if to drive home that he was serious. "Do you understand?"
"Jon, I understand, but what are you …"
"Go to sleep," he interrupted her in a firm tone that brooked no disagreement. "Tomorrow morning will be here before you know it."
Her mouth flopped open as she considered his words. With the ropes and his arm around her, she couldn't do anything. Just for curiosity's sake, she gently, so as not to overly jostle the ropes between her legs, tried to move her arms. They were utterly and completely fixed behind her back. She moved her legs around, and while she could somewhat flop them back and forth, she had no way to try to create the necessary friction in the area that needed it.
Sleep?
Jon, aggravatingly enough, was snoring within minutes, but she found sleep slow in coming, though she did try to lie still and rest.
Minute by minute, the pressure continued to build in her sex. The arousal was pitiless, and every time she shifted the knots would grind against the center of her pleasure. Slowly and steadily, she leaked into the cords imprisoning her warmth, and that only made the situation worse, as the liquid made it easier for the knots to slide back and forth. Even if she stopped breathing, the knots continued their insidious, slow, tortuous work.
A large lock of hair had drifted across her face and glued itself via sweat across her eye. She tried to blow it out of the way, but much like everything else about her situation, she was powerless to do anything about it.
She flexed her wrists a few times, attempting to see if possibly she could move the ropes away from regions that were growing too sensitive for her to tolerate any further stimulation. At the movement, Jon snuffled, pulled her a bit more closely, then went back to sleep. Daenerys bit her lower lip to keep from whimpering when the motion of her wrists pulled the knots even tighter against her slit. The thought occurred to her that maybe she could stimulate herself to release. Jon would be angry, but hopefully not too angry.
She flexed her wrists back and forth while simultaneously trying to bend and then stretch her legs. This increased the intensity of the knot movement, and for a moment, she thought it might be enough, but it wasn't … it wasn't enough, and no matter what she did, she realized, she was simply bound too tightly.
The realization that she would not be able to climax on her own didn't provide any form of catharsis. The brutal knots just kept sliding and slithering through defenseless folds and over the indignant kernel of need which all the while grew ever more sensitive. After perhaps an hour, maybe two, Daenerys was quite certain that she was now able to individually identify each tormenting fiber of the knotted rope. When she was on the verge of assigning them names to keep from losing her mind, she decided that Jon could not possibly have intended for her to suffer in this way, and even if he had, she couldn't take it any longer.
She tried not to sound hysterical when she finally spoke.
"Jon," she said into the night, and she wondered if her voice was as frenzied to his ears as they were to hers.
He murmured softly in reply.
"Jon!" she said more loudly, and this time the fever pitch in her voice was unmistakable.
Ever the warrior, he woke up quickly. He raised himself on one arm and looked at her. "Are you alright?" He reached down and roughly grasped her hands, which made the situation with the knots nestled like twisting demons in the groove of her sex even worse. "Have your hands gone numb?"
She twisted her wrists the few inches the rope vambraces allowed and grabbed at his hands. If she hadn't been such a sweaty, pathetic ball of lusty need, she might have commented on how touching his concern for her safety was. Instead, in a shrill, warbling tone, she informed him, "My hands are fine."
He sat up further and the light of the moon was sufficient for her to see the puzzled look on his face.
"What then?" he asked.
"Jon, it's too much," she said feebly. "Really, I'm serious. Please."
He laughed, and she felt like strangling him for being amused at her sweat-soaked, frothy, writhing frustration.
"Jon, really, please … please …" She wriggled as much as she could. "I can't take it anymore. If you want me to beg, I'll beg, anything … please."
He laughed again and laid back down. "Fine," he said as he draped his arm back over her. "You don't need to beg. Go ahead."
She craned her neck towards him in confusion. "Go ahead what?" she spat out.
He lifted his head again. "Your hands are tied that way so you can amuse yourself with the knots, so go ahead. I don't mind. He put his head down and snuggled against her. "I'm sure it won't take you long."
If I could do it myself, I would have by now!
"I can't!" she trilled at him. "The ropes are too tight and if I try it just makes things worse!
He immediately sat back up. "You tried without asking? What did I tell you about that?" She wanted to shriek at him to shut up and help her.
He reached across her hip, plucked at one of the demonic strands that held her slit open for the knots to do their work, and she realized she was on the verge of breaking down into tears and gibbering. He continued, "You don't get to be out there playing tickle the valley when I'm not watching, it ruins all our fun."
"JON," she howled as she thrashed in the ropes, "please, I think I'm going mad."
Her intentional and calculated use of that particular adjective provoked the reaction she sought. He drew the blanket away, sat up, and rolled her onto her back. The effect of the ropes on her sex as her hands were trapped beneath her hips was yet another level of hell for her to endure. She knew she had to look a sight, entire body drenched in sweat, hair soaked, and she could feel her eyes red and bulging in their sockets. She breathed heavily, gasping to get enough air as her need strangled her.
"You're serious, aren't you?" he asked.
"Yes!" she said as she nodded vehemently. Tears began to run from her eyes as she looked up at him. His eyes, which had been amused, seemed more caring now. "Please, Jon."
He laid a hand on her belly and if she could, she would have grabbed it and jammed his fingers against her groin.
"The simmering seems to have softened you up a bit," Jon observed. "Now, would my little queen like some help?"
He knew she hated that nickname with a fiery passion, and that she hated even more the response he expected when he used that phrase.
She didn't care as she nodded wildly. "Yes! Yes, please, your little queen would like your help!" She bucked her hips towards him as her tears began to flow more freely.
He didn't bother to untie her, that would have taken too long, instead he grabbed a small, sharp knife he kept in a cupboard below a table set near his side of the bed. He'd used it a few times in emergencies, when something went numb or cramped unexpectedly, and then he carefully … very carefully … cut loose the strands he'd used to trap her sex.
Jon manipulating the knots was almost enough, all by itself, to trigger her release. Her hips arched off the bed and she moaned and sobbed as the hideous ropes were plucked free, and as soon they were gone, she felt as though her nub and lips were bristling with outrage at their prior confinement.
He laid his right leg over her knees to pin her down, then shifted slightly so his hand had a better angle to the destination she prayed it would be seeking soon. As much as she could, which wasn't much, she forced her thighs apart so that he could work more quickly. Her sex leaked and pulsed in time with her heartbeat.
"Daenerys, you don't need to let it get this bad before you say something," he said softly as he gently began to stroke the center of her shaved cleft.
Shut up and keep going!
A single whining mewl left her throat when Jon, immediately after he touched her, looked down in surprise, pulled his hand back, and held it up. Her well-churned, silky secretions glistened thickly from where they clung to the entire side of his palm.
"Don't stop!" she pleaded.
He obliged her by lowering his hand again, and this time more vigorously focused on the small, tension filled spot that was screaming to her entire body that it would be ignored no longer.
Every limb strained involuntarily against the ropes and her eyes rolled back in her head while her eyelids began to flutter. "oh … oH … OH!" she said, with the final word a near shriek.
When Jon realized how much noise she was about to make, he clamped his other hand firmly over her mouth and pressed her head against the bed. He stroked harder with the fingers massaging the center of her groove, and then Daenerys felt the excruciating pressure finally give way.
She tried to scream, but the hand against her mouth reduced the sound to a muffled wheeze, and then dimly, through the convulsions that had just begun to wrack her body, she realized she couldn't possibly get enough air through her nose, which undoubtedly Jon did not realize, or he wouldn't have covered her mouth. Her husband was fiendishly inventive, always finding new and interesting … games … as he sometimes called them, for her to participate in, but he had seen men hanged, and Jon did not consider denying breath to the woman he loved to represent an enjoyable pastime.
The lack of air made the pleasure worse, or better, but Daenerys would sort through that puzzle later. The intensity of her climax became unbearable, and she needed to draw her knees to her belly, or throw her arms out and grab something, or scream, or anything. Jon's leg across her knees, the unyielding rope net, and his hand resolutely covering her mouth denied her any distraction from the thunderous, undulating spasm that was ripping through her body.
She would have sworn that her sex had begun to convulse around Jon's hand, the sensation was so strong. Every muscle in her groin throbbed while whip-like cracks of pleasure followed so quickly one after another that she couldn't move her chest to breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything.
Please, move your hand from my mouth!
Of course, Jon didn't, he didn't know she needed to scream and gasp for air, and even if this moment of bliss perhaps rendered all prior such experiences pale shadows by comparison, Jon probably figured she'd survived similar excitements before, so she'd survive this one as well.
But I might not!
Her inability to gasp for breath rendered each fraction of a second exquisitely focused. Her vision became a mist of sensation, she couldn't hear, couldn't feel anything, and she decided that the paroxysm overcoming her body, with the kernel beneath Jon's hand the acute center of the white-hot maelstrom, was killing her. Surely her body could not bear so much pleasure.
When her lungs managed to secure at least a bit of air through her nose, she tried again to cry to Jon, but his palm was pressing too tightly against her lips and only high-pitched snuffles could be heard. The rope net felt as though it was growing tighter, with each binding a mirror focusing sensations into her core, and Daenerys concluded that she was, in fact, about to die. Her arms felt as though they were going to wrench loose from their sockets, she was trying so hard to pull them free. As always, of course, each of her limbs stayed exactly in the position in which they'd been fixed.
Finally, slowly, the crest of her release faded, and her heart, which she was convinced had been on the verge of bursting within her chest, began to slow its beat. Jon's other hand still rested between her legs, and she would have begged him not to begin again if she could have spoken.
Clearly enraged at being tormented for so long, her sex continued to send the occasional tremor of painful joy to her brain, and her hips quivered at odd intervals. When she'd calmed enough that Jon no longer feared she'd deafen him, he pulled his hand away.
"Feel better?" he asked with a wry smile on his face. "That was pretty interesting to watch."
She responded with sounds, of that she was sure, but what passed from her lips was nothing more than a jumbled mess of wheezing syllables. Nothing worked right. She couldn't form a thought, her muscles didn't respond to whatever signals her brain was sending, and through a tangle of soaked hair her eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling. It was several minutes before she felt composed enough to attempt to speak.
"Oh, Jon," she raggedly wheezed. She tried to say more but could not.
When she tried yet again to blow a lock of hair away from her mouth, Jon reached down and brushed all of the strands away from her face. He gave her a lingering kiss on the lips then sat back and smiled at her. "You seem a lot more relaxed." He began to pull the blanket back over them, then paused and looked at her with a quizzical expression. "Are you fine now, or would you like …" he said as he began to once more reach towards her crotch.
"No!" she exclaimed as she tried to twist her hips away. "No, please, no more. I can't take it."
He chuckled, pulled the blanket back over them, lay down, and rolled her back onto her side so that she was nestled in the curve of his chest and legs.
She lay there, as feeble and weak and helpless as a newborn, as her body periodically rippled with the aftermath of what she had just experienced. She was on a bed and a blanket lay atop her, of that she was sure, but she might as well have been floating in the sky, touching nothing at all, given how separated she felt from her body. Every care she had ever had, every worry of the day, had been obliterated, and she wondered if her brain would ever again be able to formulate a complex idea.
It was some time before she felt composed enough to do or say much of anything, but eventually a bit of guilt began to poke at her. She looked back to see if Jon was still awake.
"You alright?" he murmured as he felt the movement.
"More than alright," she replied. She didn't know what her body could endure at the moment, but both of them had never been selfish in the ways of the marital bed, and her conscience required that she make the effort. "But how are you?" she asked in a low, throaty murmur. The ropes didn't allow her to reach his groin, so she brushed against his stomach with the backs of her fingers.
"Don't worry about that," he said as he discerned her meaning. "I was serious when I said I'm exhausted, plus I've got a garrison inspection first thing in the morning and then a meeting with the Lord Commander … and somehow I have a feeling that you might need some sleep."
She loved him so much for realizing the state she was in, she wanted to throw her arms around him and weep into his chest. Wiggling slightly closer was all she could manage, so she did that.
Sleep was what they both needed, but there was something she had to ask. "Jon," she said.
She thought he would be angry that she was keeping him awake, but his voice was soothing as he pulled her closer yet and responded, "Yes?"
"This evening, before …" she decided to skip to the heart of her concern, "… why haven't you told me about the magic?"
"You know all about Dondarrion's flaming sword and the Red Woman Stannis kept," he said. "And you know that's what's in me, too."
"Jon," she drew out his name, "please give me the truth. Why have you kept this from me until the night you wanted to scare me half to death by playing dead?"
"Because you hate magic," he said bluntly.
"So do you," she pointed out.
"Sam says I need to learn, that if I don't, it might get worse." His tone was begrudging, and it was clear he didn't want to discuss this topic.
She bit her lip. "I know you've already promised, but please promise once more that you won't scare me like that again."
"I won't," he promised again.
"Is it going to get worse?" she asked.
"Am I going to get worse, you mean?"
She shook her head and poked at his stomach with a finger. "You know I didn't mean that, I just mean the magic."
"Not if I control it.
"Why is this happening?"
Jon's words were slow as he answered, and it was clear he was struggling to articulate what he'd learned. "What the Red Woman … Melisandre … did, it used to be done more often, when magic was stronger in the world. Every once in a while, a long while, the magic would take hold of someone too strongly. Sam thinks that's what has happened to me."
Fear scrabbled from Daenerys's belly, gripped her chest, and began to claw towards her heart.
No, not again, please not again. I can't lose another man I love to magic.
"How could you not tell me?"
He nuzzled her neck comfortingly. "It's not a bad thing, it's just a different thing. Fireplaces flicker or grow stronger, maybe a shadow moves, Sam said it usually stops with things like that." He rubbed her shoulder in an attempt to reassure her.
Daenerys did not feel reassured.
He continued, "The shadowbinders of Asshai and the priests of R'hollor, they've been around for a very long time, and they don't just up and die for no reason. I won't either."
There had been something else she'd been wondering at for months now, and given what she'd just learned, she began to suspect it wasn't her imagination. "Do you realize you look the same?"
"The same as what?" he asked in a puzzled tone.
"You look the same as the day we met."
"So do you," he snorted. "Well, maybe you're more pleasant to look upon now, cause at the moment you're not standing around in Winterfell ordering me to obey you."
She chuckled ruefully. "Our roles have certainly been reversed on the obeying front."
He kissed the back of her neck, and she shivered in happiness.
"I don't know about that," he said in a tone she guessed attempted to sound wise and knowing.
You're not the one netted like a fish.
Daenerys rolled her eyes and decided to move the conversation back on topic. "Really, though, you do look exactly the same."
"I'm sure it's your imagination," he said with a shrug. "Lord Dondarrion … he aged, I imagine I will as well."
"But you don't know?"
He shrugged again, and Daenerys decided that she was finding his nonchalant reaction to her concern over his health rather irritating.
"What are you going to do?"
He sighed. "Look, I'll be fine."
"Jon," she said sternly, a bit of fire creeping into her voice. "What does Sam think?"
I should have started with that question. Samwell Tarly is the smartest man I've ever met.
"Sam read all about what's happening to me, it used to not be that uncommon. When the magic digs in deep, the thing to do is to make sure it doesn't get worse."
"And how do you do that?"
He continued reluctantly, "Figure out what I've got, so I don't use it by accident, and then, don't do more … don't … draw more into me …" he struggled to articulate whatever he was trying to say, and his phrases grew halting. "You know what, just ask Sam, he's better at this sort of thing."
"Well, Sam is not here, and you are," she reminded him. "Go on."
He sighed, and now he did sound very tired. "I only understand about half of what Sam said, but it's like this, once the power gets going, it just kind of snowballs, or fireballs, and then there's nothing you can do … it will just get stronger and stronger, starts to have a mind of its own, starts to change you. Cause of that, I have to make sure I have to learn how to control it right from the beginning, so that I don't use it by accident … don't draw … too much into me." He chuckled. "Considering that I bloody hate magic, it shouldn't be hard to learn how not to use it."
"I want to know what you and Sam talk about, and I want to talk to Sam, too," she said. When he didn't reply, she did her very best to continue in a calm voice. "Jon, I want your word on that."
"You have it," he said.
She was about to comment upon how reluctant that promise sounded when he neatly shifted the subject.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "the first time I lay down to sleep next to a girl, I mean the very first time in my entire life, it was after I had tied her up much like you are now."
I know he just wants to stop talking about magic, and I'm definitely irritated by it, but I want to hear about this!
"No," she gasped. "You aren't serious."
Jon seldom talked about the time from when he left Winterfell until they met, and even though she realized that he had chosen a subject likely to distract her from the talk of magic and fire and resurrection, she admitted to herself that she was, in fact, distracted.
"I am entirely serious," he said. "Ropes wrapped around her wrists, legs, her body … I mean, I wasn't as good at it then as I am now, but same basic concept. Tied her up as good as I could, and then I laid right down next to her, not much different than we are now. Except it was in snow, I guess."
Daenerys didn't know if she had ever been more stunned.
"Did she like it?" she eventually asked.
He laughed, and the sound thawed a bit of the worry for his health from her heart.
"I don't know, but if she did, not nearly as much as you do, my little queen."
If one of her arms had been free to move, she would have smacked him.
"Who was she?" she asked.
"A wildling girl," he informed her. "When we woke up, she suggested that I must have liked tying her up, since I'd been stabbing her in the back that morning," he hesitated a moment, then continued, "Not with a knife, I mean, but with my …"
"Yes," she interrupted him. "I quite understood your meaning."
"Maybe I did like what I had done, and lying next to her after," he admitted. "But I denied it. I denied a lot of things she said that turned out to be true."
"Like what?"
His voice grew somber, and his body grew stiff. "That the Night's Watch was cruel, in its way. That to deny yourself love was wrong. That not everyone who isn't with you is, in fact, your enemy." He paused, almost as if weighing if he should continue, "that I should stay with her."
"Did she love you?" Daenerys asked quickly.
"Aye," Jon replied. "She did."
"And did you love her?"
Jon pulled back a bit from her. "You're the love of my life, you know that."
She stuck out her tongue and made a gagging noise. "We both had lives before we met, dear husband. It's fine, I won't be offended."
"I did," he confirmed as he drew her close once more. Upon seeing that his constant jostling had moved Daenerys from the pillow that her head had been resting on, he lifted her head and tucked the cushion beneath.
Her curiosity continued to run rampant. "What happened to this girl you tied up?"
Jon answered quickly, too quickly, and she began to suspect that he might not have chosen the topic randomly at all. Her husband was simple in his ways, at times, but she had learned he could surprise her with his insight. "She needed me. Needed my help, but I thought that she'd done things that were wrong, and that she would continue to do things that were wrong, so I turned my back on her. I turned my back, and I fought against her and her people, and then she died knowing that I had made myself her enemy."
Daenerys lay very still, and her blood ran cold.
Jon has been waiting to say this a long time, and he has decided tonight is when he was ready to speak it.
Jon continued, "Another thing she used to say, that she was also right about, was that I wasn't particularly clever, that the things I thought I knew, I didn't, really." He laughed, but there was no humor behind it, it was the grinding sound of an old hurt churning in a petrified wound that would never heal. "I wonder many nights, when I'm lying here holding you, how it is possible that a man who has made such a stupid mistake as helping to kill the woman he loved instead of being there for her, could possibly make the same mistake twice."
"Jon," she said, "roll me over."
"What's wrong?" he asked. "Something pinching?"
She sighed. "Just roll me over."
He obliged, and she looked at him. Then she leaned her head forward, at least she could still move her neck, and kissed him. Jon, clearly surprised, didn't respond at first, then he kissed her back. It was sweet, and it was tender, and it was healing.
"That was nice," she said when they were finished. "Roll me back."
He obliged once more, and Daenerys wondered if dizziness would soon set in. She considered saying something flowery and pithy, filled with metaphor, but she decided she'd try sending Jon a message in his own succinct, direct manner. "You didn't make the same mistake twice, I'm here with you now, and that's that."
"Fair enough," he replied.
Daenerys woke the next morning with a light heart and an even lighter soul. Jon thankfully didn't bother trying to untie the network of cords, he sliced them deftly away and like magic her net … her oddly protective-feeling net … was gone. Her joints cracked satisfyingly as she craned her neck from side to side and stretched her limbs. When he reached to unfasten her collar, she did attempt to tempt him with a certain look in her eye that typically he could not resist, but Jon was insistent that he would keep his appointments. She resigned herself to confronting her own duties for the day.
Before Jon left, he promised to inform her handmaidens and the Kingsguard at the base of the tower that they could head up immediately, and she thanked him before he left. As Daenerys settled in to wait for her attendants to arrive, she resolved to find Lord Tyrion and make as many profuse apologies to their Hand as was needed to ease his mind over her conduct the prior day. A concept that had seemed so rage-inducing the day before, now seemed like the most sensible thing to do.
She found herself humming happily as she drew an undergown over her head and opened the door to the larger, more opulently decorated, chambers that formed their waiting rooms and her garment room. It seemed somewhat ironic that of all the rooms of the suite that made up their chambers, only the bedchamber reflected Jon's tastes.
. . . . . . . . .
Habit breeds carelessness, and the Targaryens of Westeros had indeed grown careless. Traditions such as the Kingsguard standing watch over royal quarters, or queens not being left unattended, existed for a reason. Jon did not like pomp, and he valued their privacy, but he had been blind to certain realities.
First, that the Red Keep had secret ways unknown to those who ruled it.
Second, that when he and Daenerys had modified the roof of the Royal Tower to allow Drogon a place to land, it had the unintended effect of introducing a new path of ingress into the royal chambers, namely, by way of hooks and ropes slung from the balcony of a neighboring tower.
Third, that although the monarchs of the Seven Kingdom endeavored to keep a friendly and open court, Daenerys had not taken sufficient care in informing Lord Commander Brienne and their household guard of the existence of old enemies who were unlikely to have abandoned their grudges.
Any of these oversights, individually, may not have been a concern, but together, on that morning, they combined to form a grave concern indeed. Thus, when the dusky hand of a Qartheen sellsword, hired at a great expense due to his skills at entering and exiting secured places without being detected, snaked an arm around Daenerys's neck and then proceeded to clamp a foul-smelling rag over her face, there was nobody within earshot to hear her cries as she began to lose consciousness.